Anxiety, Diabetes Type 2, Gout, Hypercholesterolemia, Meniere’s Disease, Neuropathy, Osteoarthritis, Osteopenia, Pernicious Anemia, and Supraventricular Tachycardia. I have a small pharmacy in my home because of these conditions.

The week of November 15, 2015 was not a good one for me. This is not an excuse for not keeping up with reading and learning about how to increase traffic and marketing my services online. It just takes longer.

On Wednesday November 15, 2015, my wife and I needed to run some errands. While out of the house, many physical manifestations began to arise. Their toll felt for days afterward.

I am grateful to be able to work from home with no supervisor hovering over me, wondering why I’m not busting hump on the latest project. I did have some problems with supervisors at my job with PacBell, a contributing factor to my retiring early. I retired at age 58.

As age crept up on me, so did other medical conditions. Cataract surgery for one. These are the “Golden years”.

If you are living with health issues

First, create a sick day plan.

The sick day plan should include working on some aspect of your business. Being under the weather doesn’t mean you give up. It only means you may have to rearrange your schedule.

Second, keeping up with clients.

If a time comes when you are not 100 percent, you need to contact your client and let them know, especially if any illness may adversely affect the timeline you’ve given them for their contracted project.

Looking like an amateur to your client is horrendous to your business and personal reputation by not keeping them up to date on their project.

Third, always keep as healthy as possible.

When working, you must consider making time for yourself. You must eat, exercise, and take mental health breaks to maintain optimal health. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is important for you and your business. If you are not 100 percent, your business won’t be either.

Your health is more important than your business if you work from home as a freelancer or consultant.

I can attest to this from personal experience.

Consider creating a wellness program for optimal health that will allow you to run your home based business efficiently and effectively.

Unfortunately, working from home isn’t as easy as some portray. Many individuals and companies are willing to tell you it is, if only you buy this book, program or software, their agenda is to make money from you.

A Bit about Who I am

I have no agenda other than to help people by what I have learned from nine plus years working from home trying to build a business online. I began this journey three years after retiring from a job I held with a company for thirty-seven years.

The company was downsizing and wanted older employees to retire with a package that was hard not to accept.

Because of medical conditions, my wife and I decided it was time to take PacBell up on their offer. I retired in December of 2003 and began my journey my way in February 2006.

Along my journey, I added other services because the company I was contract with asked me to edit a manuscript besides the reviews I was writing for them. Through that company, I began to contract for another company as a reader and writer.

I would read books and determine if a book was worthy of being printed and to write a review if my opinion was yes the story should be considered for publication. Almost the duties of an acquisitions editor.

I have interned as a copy editor for and online site and worked freelance from job boards. I mention this only as a bit of background of what I’ve done from home.

Work from Home

First, ask yourself why you want to work from home.

Freedom

Money

Be your own boss

More time for life (Family, friends … etc.)

Something you feel qualified to do (Would you do it if you never received money for it? This is what passion is all about.)

Make some extra money

Second, forget about life work balance if you want to grow your business and be able to afford to quit your 9 to 5 job. Until your work from home scheme is able to pay for your present lifestyle, don’t quit your day job.

Third and perhaps the most important, how many hats you are willing wear in your business.

There may also have to wear other hats that may crop up while running a business. You must be quick on your feet and flexible. There are always challenges and opportunities to learn more about being a contract employee.

There may be state, county, and local licenses and taxes that may be required to run a business from home.

As a work from home freelancer, you will be responsible for health insurance, business insurance, records, keeping books for the IRS if you are in America. You will be paying quarterly taxes.

How will you conduct your business? You will need to consult an attorney to make a decision to be a DBA (Doing Business As), LLC (Limited Liability Corporation), or an S or C Corporation.

Each has pros and cons. I highly recommend you consult an attorney to explain the differences to you so can make an informed decision.

What do you need to Work from Home?

High speed internet

Computer with sufficient RAM and Hard drive space for business only

A dedicated business telephone line

A dedicated workspace free of distractions

A separate business bank account

Voicemail

As you can see, working from home is far from as simple as some think. It is hard work and long hours to create a thriving home based business.

It is not all downside; there are many benefits to working from home, one needs to look at the reality of working for themselves in a home based business.

Any business is hard work and long hours to make is successful.

If you decide to go into business, think about what I’ve said here and be clear about what your motives for going into a home based business are.

Of course, if you’re running a business there should be information for potential customers to contact you. If you’re running your business from home, you should have a separate phone line strictly for the business with a business voicemail message that is professional and also offering something from your business, a special, free eBook, or free report. You get the idea.

Are you ready to run a small business? It depends on how you answer the questions above.

If you can’t answer them, your business is in trouble before you even start.

I’m not saying don’t start a business, which many people do on a daily basis.

What I am saying, if you want to start a business, educate yourself about what it takes to make your business a success.

It is hard work, long hours, and consistency to run a business.

Are you up to the challenge?

If not, think long and hard about why you want to start a business.

Starting a business with the thought of making money, is the wrong reason to start a business because most of the money, which may be long in coming should go back into the business to help growth of your business.

Thinking about this is why the decision about writing about freelancing came to mind. The title is Taming the Freelance Market. Because of some computer problems, this is taking longer than it should.

It is time consuming to try and writing while reading books for review. As a writer, you have to make time where you can, like sitting in front of the computer, pad, and pencil, or whatever you use to write.

First, Taming the Freelance Market is about what it takes to be a freelancer, what types of freelancing are available as an entrepreneur. Freelancers are solo business people, thus the term entrepreneur.

Being a person that does not sugarcoat things, the book Taming the Freelance Market will explain various aspects of being a freelancer, exploding some myths of freelancing, and the various hats entrepreneurs must wear unless you have the money to outsource parts of your business.

Second, a book repurposed from a course created to help overcome procrastination. While taking some online writing courses at Writers’ Village University, creation of a course on procrastination came to fruition after many asking, “Why not create a course about procrastination?” Once completing the course creation, began facilitating the course and other courses, and created a Creative Writing Workshop. The course on procrastination will become a book titled Overcoming Procrastination.

Working on two books, editing manuscripts for authors, and reading books for review is a bit rough to schedule, probably why getting to sleep around midnight or one am is normal.

Everyone needs to take a break, work on the mundane things that life puts in your way.

You have to find the time to work on your freelance business, to which you must work on as a freelancer whether full-time or part-time.

Many entrepreneurs want to run their own business and tell their boss they quit. As explained in

Taming the Freelance Market there are some barriers to becoming a freelancer and making money at it.

This is what Taming the Freelance Market will be all about from a freelancer willing to give you the straight talk, blemishes and all. At least that what this freelancer that has been in business for seven years so far, and learning via the university of hard knocks along the way.

By keeping an open mind and more importantly a closed mouth, there are things to learn about the niche freelancers choose to enter. You would be surprised at what you can learn by listening, reading, and asking questions.

There are people out there that are willing to help. Taming the Freelance Market is how Robert Medak Freelance Writer is doing it.

Following along on the journey of writing Taming the Freelance Market, and Overcoming Procrastination are works in progress working toward publication.

He was born in southern California, and lived in Kansas until moving to southern West Virginia with his wife and their cats and dogs. While in California, he and his wife Connie ran an animal rescue where Robert wrote job descriptions, flyers, and was treasurer.

P.S. Keep up with the journey toward book completion and publication, which will be posted here.

There are good, bad, and ugly parts of running a business out of your home, but the good out ways the bad and the ugly if your’re passionate about the business you want to run from your home.

You must always strike a balance between your business and personal life to avoid burnout. You must also remember that you are an entrepreneur who enjoys what they are doing, if you don’t, why are you in business.